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Liberal Education and Democracy addresses three vital arguments for liberal education and its integral relationship to democracy.
Liberal education is currently under attack as both politically subversive and economically impractical. In Liberal Education and Democracy, Bob Pepperman Taylor evaluates both the defenses that have been offered for liberal education and the complex relationship between liberal education and democracy. He offers a compelling case for maintaining a strong commitment to this form of education as an essential good for all citizens.
His three primary arguments for liberal education are that it prepares students to be useful contributors to the economy, that it prepares citizens to be thoughtful and responsible, and that it can stimulate students to experience the delight of intellectual exploration and understanding. Taylor moves through each of these arguments and concludes that the seemingly least practical of them may in fact be the most powerful. He gives an insightful glimpse into the current democratic climate and through thorough examination argues that democracies need liberal education as much as liberal learning requires the freedom of democratic societies.
“Bob Pepperman Taylor provides a thoughtful commentary that is timely and provocative as American higher education faces reconsideration, including external pressures to explain and even justify its missions and offerings within the framework of American society, economics, and political systems of belief and action.” —John R. Thelin, author of A History of American Higher Education
“At a time when liberal education has been subject to critique both from within and outside the academy, this book is a serious and careful defense of the merits of teaching and studying the liberal arts.” —Susan McWilliams Barndt, author of The American Road Trip and American Political Thought
"[Taylor] provides a clearly written, well-balanced, and thoughtful treatment of the subject. Recommended for students, teachers, general readers, academic administrators, and above all, those who seek to play an active political role in reforming higher education." —Choice
"Bob Pepperman Taylor’s book is the culmination of his decades of teaching and scholarship in the fields of politics and the philosophy of education. . . . We must be conversant in explaining the utilitarian and pragmatic arguments for liberal education . . . for those who can only be persuaded on more limited grounds. You must speak to people in their own language. Taylor’s book helps his readers to speak those languages a little more proficiently and more eloquently, not just to make clear the activity to outsiders, but to ourselves, too." —Law & Liberty
Bob Pepperman Taylor is the Elliott A. Brown Green and Gold Professor of Law, Politics, and Political Behavior at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Lessons from "Walden": Thoreau and the Crisis of American Democracy, which was named the winner of the American Political Science Association section award for the best book of 2020 in American political thought.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Liberal Education and the American Tradition
2. Action
3. Virtue
4. Delight
Conclusion
Bibliography